Top Martyr

After last week’s Top Chef episode, the backlash against Elia, Cliff, Sam, and Ilan continues to mount like a 50-foot Waimea wave as more stories emerge that make Marcel look like the innocently suffering victim.

Michael T. Tool of the Las Vegas Weekly interviewed Marcel and got the scoop that has been filling the message boards with wails and rended garments for Marcel the Martyr.

‘This girl came up to me at a nightclub and asked me if I was Marcel from Top Chef. The next thing I knew, this bottle struck me, and my friends had to rush me to the hospital. I needed 30 stitches for this.’

You read that correctly: The man was attacked not for his political beliefs, not because he supports the wrong football team, but for being a contestant on a popular reality show, Top Chef.

Futhermore, Ilan Hall isn’t winning any popularity contests with this interview with New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer:

This didn’t air, but he had to make this dish about lust and I told him that he’s never lusted after a woman, all he does is go home and jerk off thinking about Joël Robuchon. And the only thing he could think of as a comeback was, ‘I don’t jerk off to Joël Robuchon.’ That was it!

Charming. Classy. Clearly the type of person Top Chef wants to put out there.

Maybe Ilan is giving so many interviews, he can’t remember which of his personalities said what, but he told Honolulu’s Star Bulletin the following:

But, what’s done is done. ‘We’re all good friends now that the show is over,’ said Hall. ‘I keep in touch with a lot of people … Marcel and I talk a lot.’

Marcel seems to have an entirely different take on his “friendship” with the cheftestant who has gone to great lengths to attack him in every way possible. From the Las Vegas Sun:

Strangely, during a phone interview Friday morning Vigneron says he still gets phone calls from Hall. ‘He has been calling me every day. He wished me a merry Christmas and says he’s just checking in. (But) I haven’t returned any, because he was such a (jerk) on the show.’

So, when Ilan says they talk a lot, I guess he means he talks to Marcel’s answering machine a lot.

Television Without Pity poster WanderFree reacted to the Las Vegas Sun interview with, “I just thought the ‘calling every day’ was um … a little ‘don’t you love me anymore?’ behavior. There is definitely a difference between being friends with someone and stalking them.”

God help all the Marcel lovers out there if any of the others take home the 100K and title of Top Chef next week. On second thought, God help the winner. And get them a bodyguard. Or five.